Hey guys, sorry for the long post, but I really appreciate any input you guys can give.
I have a 1/3-1/2 acre pond in Wayne County, NY, that used to be filled with stunted bass and nothing else. The area around the pond is chemically fertilized so I'm not really excited about eating fish out of it, so it's mostly just a catch-and-release fun pond. In the past, it was easy to catch a lot of bass, but they were emaciated and that bothered me. In the Spring of 2021, I decided to try to fix the problem.
Per the recommendations of many of this forum, and loads of other places, I pulled out all the bass I could catch and added 250 adult bluegill caught from several local bodies of water. I was attempting the "classic" LBM/BG combo.
Last year, I hardly fished the pond at all, just letting the fish spawn up and do their thing. This year, I started fishing it casually here and there, just to take a sampling of what's going on. What did I find? In a word, bluegills. The pond is swarming with them. For example, I brought two of my daughters out earlier today with worms and we caught probably 40 of them in an hour, ranging from 3-9" in length. Several of them were quite large and fat.
But I hardly ever catch bass. I have caught maybe 2 this year, both around 10" long, but that's it.
And now I'm not sure what to do. My goal for the pond was to have a healthy, self-sufficient ecosystem. I don't necessarily care about having huge fish, but I'd love a healthy pond full of fish that bite lures. The kids enjoy catching the bluegills on worms, but you can't catch them on any lures that I enjoy fishing.
So, here are the questions:
1. Did I make a mistake trying to go for LMB/BG in a small northern pond? Seems like now everything I read says that I shouldn't have done that.
2. I feel like I'm headed towards a classic stunted bluegill pond now. How do I fix the problem? I'm a pretty determined angler and I think I could (mostly) fish the bluegill out. I realize I can't get all of them, but I could do some damage on them I think. Should I do that and try to establish a new forage base like YP and GS? My pond isn't overly deep, but I think perch would do ok and would be easier prey for the bass. I just don't have any bass right now that can eat the BG over 4" or so.
4. Speaking of that, should I add more big (14"+) LMB and hope they can do more damage on the mid-sized bluegills and give a boost to the LMB population? I don't mind having a lot of small bass around, as long as they're healthy and not grossly skinny. Maybe the solution is that simple? Maybe I removed too many bass back in 2021?
I'm pretty committed to doing anything I can do to remedy the problem, besides poisoning/draining the pond. I share the pond with my neighbors (who built the pond) and I want to honor their wishes. I'm willing to host some fishing tournaments for my kids' friends and let them try to clear the BG out, or something like that, in order to make space for a new start... but I'm not sure what that new start should look like.
Here's a bit more about the pond:
- 1-8' deep, with most of it in the 2-5' range.
- The entire pond would be full of aquatic vegetation if we didn't fight it chemically and mechanically. Some times in the year (pre-spawn) it's full of weeds. After the spawn we attack the weeds and it opens up... probably too much for the forage to survive heavy predation.
What would you guys do in my situation? Thanks so much!
Last edited by Dan Freda; 08/08/23 04:07 PM.
